1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a user interface technique in a multisystem network in which a data storage unit such as a hard disk drive can be accessed in common by a plurality of devices, and to a device for access to the data storage unit. The present invention also relates to a method for access to a data storage unit, suitably applicable in the multisystem network.
This application claims the priority of the Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-339211 filed on Sep. 30, 2003, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
2. Description of the Related Art
Having various advantages such as a large storage capacity, random access, capability of reproducing data having just been recorded a predetermined time before the reproduction, etc., the hard disk drive has recently come to be used as a data storage means in more and more recorder/players for TV broadcast programs (cf. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-094916).
The Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is applied as an interface standard to the file management in the hard disk drive.
Note here that a multisystem network has been proposed which is a combination of a TV broadcast program recorder/player and a video game machine. If a hard disk drive can be shared by the video game machine and recorder/player, the multisystem network can be simplified in construction and thus produced with less costs.
For building up a multisystem network in which a hard disk drive as a data storage unit is accessed by both a processor in the video game machine and processor in the recorder/player, it is necessary to provide a multisystem-network hardware construction capable of arbitration in such access between the processors.
Since the large number of existent video game machines are desirably reusable in such a multisystem network, so it is essential that the video game machine hardware should be designed to have a construction as similar to the conventional one as possible and the file system for the video game machine should be reusable as it is or with a modification as small as possible.